Chantecler

The chef-d'oeuvre of Rostand's mature years, now deservedly
being rediscovered in France. This new edition, with text in French but
comprehensive notes in English, will introduce readers to what many consider
to be his best play.

Chantecler, by Edmond Rostand. Original French text with English
end-notes to each Act, Introduction and Brief Chronology by Sue Lloyd,
M. Phil. (Genge Press, February 2010)

Written in typically lively verse, Chantecler contains
some of Edmond Rostand's best lyrical writing, including the famous 'Hymn
to the Sun'. It also explores some of his favourite themes. This Genge
Press edition of the French text, published to mark Chantecler's centenary
in February 2010, aims to make the play more accessible, by giving it
an introduction in English and comprehensive notes, also in English. It
is our hope that this will enable many more readers to understand and
enjoy this major play, which deserves to become as well-known as Cyrano
de Bergerac.

If Cyrano de Bergerac was the play of Rostand's youth, then Chantecler
is the play of his maturity. It deals with the loss of illusions and the
renewal of faith in one's vocation; the difficulties of creativity, and
the role of the poet in society. In this most personal of all his plays,
Rostand reveals his innermost being although he knew this would attract
ridicule and scorn. Written when the poet, ill at ease with the fashionable
life of Paris during the Belle Époque, had made his home in the Pyrenean
countryside near Cambo, Chantecler is suffused with Rostand's love
of his native soil. The simplicity and honesty of traditional provincial
life are contrasted with the snobbish and cynical ways of the capital.

Like all Rostand's plays, Chantecler embodies a 'leçon d'âme',
a lesson for the soul. Its central theme is the importance of fulfilling
one's vocation to the best of one's ability. And, like the earlier La
Princesse Lointaine and La Samaritaine,Chantecler is
also about the power of love to transform and transcend human nature.
As Rostand himself made clear in his reception speech to the Académie
française, he believed his 'lessons for the soul' should be absorbed
almost unconsciously by the audience. So Chantecler also tells
a story, expressed in witty or lyrical language, amusing characters, and
humorous or poignant situations.

Unusually for the time, all the characters are animals or birds. The
hero Chantecler is a cockerel who sings hymns to the sun and whose cockcrow
is famous far and wide. Its excellence is due to Chantecler's secret belief
that it is he who causes the sun to rise every morning overhis valley.
The cock worships the sun because it gives light and warmth so that daily
life can continue: in contrast the darkness it dispels is symbolic of
ignorance, prejudice, faithlessness and malice. The creatures of the night
plot against the cock and almost cause his death. Chantecler, traumatised,
goes to live in the forest with the wild golden pheasant whom he adores.
But jealous of his adoration of the sun and his commitment to what he
sees as his duty to make the sun rise, she tricks him into realising that
the sun can rise without his crowing, by concealing from him that the
dawn is approaching while he is consumed by grief for a shot nightingale.
Disillusioned but still believing he has a duty to crow in the morning
to awaken his valley, if not the sun, Chantecler returns to his farmyard.
The pheasant, repentant, allows herself to be caught and brought back
to the cock's farmyard to live there with him.

The play is set in countryside like that surrounding Rostand's Pyrenean
home, the villa Arnaga, near Cambo-les-bains, now a Rostand museum. The
poet's delight in the natural world is vividly expressed, especially in
Chantecler's lyrical speeches where his song brings about, as he believes,
the rising of the sun. The light of the sun, which symbolises an inspiring
ideal, and the sacredness of work and duty, are themes running through
the play, linked by the figure of Chantecler himself. Chantecler's idealistic
attitude to life is contrasted with the worldly ways of those around him.

At its première, Chantecler was not as great a success as Cyrano
de Bergerac or L'Aiglon. The long delays (the play had been
awaited since 1905); an unsympathetic lead actor (Chantecler was
written for Constant Coquelin, the first Cyrano de Bergerac, but he died
in 1909); the use of a commercial theatre rather than the Comédie-Française
(because the play had been promised to Coquelin); the play's criticism
of Parisian society, and the novelty of animal characters, all these acted
against a proper appreciation of Rostand's play in February 1910. However,
Chantecler played to full houses for over three hundred consecutive
performances, while three troupes set off to perform it in the provinces
and even abroad. The final performance at the Porte-Saint-Martin theatre
took place on the first of November 1910. Copies of the play, published
by Fasquelle, also sold well.

Rostand himself was convinced of the merit of his play, and a posthumous
production at the Porte-Saint-Martin in 1928 was a resounding success.
Perhaps because of the complications of staging, Chantecler has
not been revived in France as often as Cyrano de Bergerac or L'Aiglon.
However interest has been growing more recently. After an acclaimed version
for French television in 1976 starring Jean Piat, the next major French
production was Jean-Claude Martin's dashing revival, the highlight of
the Avignon Summer Festival in 1984. Audiences found the play so modern,
they could hardly believe it was authentic Rostand. Chantecler
was again acclaimed as a masterpiece. Ten years later, Jérome Savary's
production at the Théâtre National de Chaillot again enjoyed success.
There were also revivals at Nantes in 1987, Lyons in June 1992 and Bordeaux
in 1999, while Chantecler was given a millenium festival performance
in August 2000 at Rostand's home, Arnaga.

The text of the play has also become available more easily in France.
Both the 1985 and 1994 productions led to printed versions, in Théâtre
Magazine and L'Avant-Scène respectively. Harmattan brought
out a new edition in 1996, and in 2006 Garnier-Flammarion published a
fully annotated edition, with excellent notes and introduction by the
French Rostand scholar Philippe Bulinge. Performances abroad have been
few, due to the difficulties of translation. In the USA, Maude Adams performed
in Louis N. Parker's version as early as 1911. Then silence, until Cory
Einbinder's version using puppets as well as actors in Philadelphia in
1995 and in New York 2005. He used Kaye Nolte Smith's translation. In
Britain, Terence Gray chose Chantecler in June 1933 for his last
production before the closure of his avant-garde experiment at the Festival
Theatre, Cambridge. There have been various attempts to translate Chantecler
into English (see the Rostand Bibliography page) but none since 1961.
Until a new translation becomes available, it is the editor's hope that
this annotated edition will encourage new readers to appreciate and enjoy
Rostand's masterpiece, and perhaps even inspire a theatre director to
take on the challenge of performing Chantecler in English on a
British or American stage.

STOP PRESS

To celebrate the centenary of Chantecler, Les Amis d'Arnaga
et d'Edmond Rostand organised a most successful conference at Arnaga
on June 25-26th 2010. Participants included M. Patrick Besnier, who edited
Cyrano de Bergerac and L'Aiglon for Folio; M. Philippe Bulinge,
who edited La Samaritaine and Chantecler, and has recently
brought out an edition of a newly discovered translation of Goethe's
Faust by Rostand, and M. Olivier Goetz, who has, with another participant,
M. Michel Forrier, just published an early work by Rostand, Le Gant
Rouge, and Sue Lloyd, of the Genge Press. Besides speeches covering
many aspects of Chantecler (which will be made available on the
web-site of the Amis d'Arnaga), we were able to see film clips including
the whole of Émile Cohl's 1910 cartoon, which used scenery modelled on
the stage version. The conference took place in the idyllic setting of
Arnaga, with its gardens and fountains, and the house was also open after
hours for participants to explore and to see the special exhibition concerning
Chantecler and its staging. This opportunity to celebrate and discuss
Edmond Rostand and his plays, especially Chantecler, was much appreciated
by all who took part. See www.rostand-arnaga.com
for more information.

REVIEWS OF THE GENGE PRESS EDITION

Professor Derek Connon, of Swansea University, writing for Modern
Languages Review, Janaurary 2011 (Vol.106, i), has pointed out that
'the main thrust of the drama is serious and poetic... maintaining this
when one's central character is effectively dressed in a chicken outfit
proves difficult even for the playwright who made a romantic hero of the
man with a huge nose'. Modern performances have dealt with this by dressing
the characters like the humans they represent, such as giving the woodpecker
the uniform of a French academician. Readers of course do not have this
difficulty. Professor Connon concludes that 'anglophone readers will find
Lloyd's assistance invaluable in finding their way through Rostand's densely
poetic and playful language'.

SONG IN ENGLISH RETELLING THE STORY

Sue Lloyd's friend Eileen Ann Moore, a folk singer and composer, was
so inspired by the story of Chantecler that she wrote and composed a song
about him. Link to be added.